Set in 1979 Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq has imposed martial law and, within a few months, the country is decreed a Muslim state. Aicha, a well-adjusted woman in her forties, devotes her life to the education of her eighteen-year-old son Salim, in the little village of Charkhi, in the Pakistani Pendjab. Salim is a quiet dreamer, but the fast moving political situation fills Aicha with anxiety, since her son is changing out of all recognition.
Silent Waters means well, but falls way short of its mark of enlightening the world to the plight of South Asian women in this period of history. It just isn't believable enough.
Sabiha Sumar's debut feature could scarcely be more relevant to Pakistan's present, or, given this country's history of backing such repressive regimes, to ours.
Swirls amid memory and dreams while reflecting how much is masked by two-faced rhetoric, and how overlooked the victims of patriarchal nationalism and Islamism are.
An indictment of intolerance, Silent Waters is a truly powerful picture, and of the sort that sneaks up on you and stays with you long after you've left the theatre.
Surviving the horror of the Partition...to struggle with it in the present...The film looks at the ever present, subtle and insidious threat of cruelty and violence that bubbled to the surface during the Partition as a miasma that can easily trickle out with a little help from bigotry, dissatisfaction and unhealed
memories... and how it inevitably targets the most vulnerable...in this case...the women. Understated and moving.
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